Sunday, June 22, 2014

So my five year blogoversary past this past Monday without any fanfare because of real life obligations. And because, not being in the Warlords of Draenor Alpha at this point, I don't have a ton to write about. My various Warcraft toons are basically on hold, making gold each week, but generally hanging out waiting for the next expansion. I've been playing a little bit of Wildstar, and, while it's an excellent game, I'm not sure even that is going to be enough to hold my attention until WoD drops.

But I did want to reflect a bit on what I've accomplished here over those 5 years since I first laid down the first post in this space. At that time, I had exactly 2 level 80 max level toons (having only gotten one character to max level over the course of Vanilla and Burning Crusade.

So since then, I've managed to level a total of 15 characters to max level - one of each class on the Horde side on one server, and 4 alliance characters on another server. I've also leveled one character to max level in Rift (with a second not far behind), one character to max level in SWTOR, and I'm about a third of the way there on Wildstar.

I may give up on Wildstar and go back to playing Rift a bit more. My guardian mage is pretty close to max level but my defiant rogue / hunter has a way to go. I have managed to get my Engineer / Settler to level 19, but I'm finding it's not a game that's as conducive as I'd like to an extremely casual play style. I tend to play mostly while traveling (which is fine) or in the evenings while watching TV with my wife. If I set things down to watch something or talk with my wife about something, it's not a great situation if that has a huge impact on me in game. In WoW or Rift, I can park my toon in a safe place, and worse case scenario, I have to run back to my corpse. That's not an option in Wildstar, and I've found that a bit frustrating. But that's me as an extremely casual player. Fantastic game and if I was playing a lot more than I am now, I'd probably be much more focused on it.

Monday, June 9, 2014

So I've started to dip my toes into Wildstar, including playing a little bit during the early launch period. My play time has been pretty limited because of other real life commitments, but wanted to report out here on some initial thoughts.

I may need to change the name of this blog by the time it's all said and done, as I find myself still reporting out here as I try out and play other games. I've talked in this space about Rift, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, and now Wildstar. My alt addiction hasn't changed, it's really just spreading as a disease to other platforms.

So here's what I've done so far on Wildstar. My "main" character so far has been my Mordesh Engineer / Settler. I'm enjoying the engineer so far as a ranged class with a decent amount of survivability. It has a little bit of a pet class feel with the two bots that you get to run around with and that's firmly within my comfort zone. The bots are a little buggy at times though and have a tendency to sometimes run off and do their own thing - particularly if you're in an area with heavy mob concentrations.

So far, I've been playing as a pure assault focused build, but I may switch that up a bit and try a "tankier" spec to see how that feels. While the class overall works well, I"m not killing things overly fast.

The Settler path has been pretty interesting so far. I like building the little buff stations that help out the other folks in the zone. There are a lot of thing that show up with the settler icon - planting flowers, repairing banners and other things that I feel compelled to do because they have the little icon, but they don't really appear to be accomplishing much or adding value. And it just reverses anyway after a period of time. So while I'm still enjoying it, start to feel a little bit of regret on the Settler choice.

My other character that I've mostly been messing with has been a Human Spellslinger / Soldier. So far I really like this one a lot. Seems to still have good survivability and fun abilities. The Soldier path, while not wildly popular, works pretty well for me. As long as I'm out killing a bunch of stuff anyway, I may as well get "extra credit" for some of it.

I'm thinking about also trying an Esper / Explorer and and a Medic / Scientist - maybe on the Dominion side, just to try everything out a bit. For right now though, I want to focus on working to get one of my first two to max level. My engineer is only level 11, so I've got quite a way to go.